By focusing on a period of a major public childcare expansion in Germany, this study investigates whether higher levels of childcare coverage for under-threes have been positively associated with employment among mothers with different educational backgrounds. Both standard economic labour theories and sociological theories presume that the effect of public childcare provision varies with mothers’ educational attainment. The analysis links county-level data on annual childcare ratios with individual-level data from the Socio-Economic Panel Study (2007–2016). To match mothers with similar characteristics in counties with childcare ratios above and below the annual median within East and West Germany, entropy balancing is applied. Findings indicate a positive relationship between childcare provision and maternal employment, with more pronounced associations for mothers with at least a vocational degree, those with a second birth and those who receive full-time access to childcare.

中文翻译：

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具有不同教育背景的东西德母亲的公共托儿服务和就业参与

通过关注德国公共儿童保育的主要扩张时期，本研究调查了未成年人的更高儿童保育水平是否与具有不同教育背景的母亲的就业呈正相关。标准的经济劳动理论和社会学理论都假定，提供公共托儿服务的效果随母亲的受教育程度而异。该分析将县级年度育儿率数据与社会经济专题研究（2007-2016）中的个人级数据联系起来。为了在东德和西德的育儿率高于或低于年中位数的县中匹配具有相似特征的母亲，采用了熵平衡。调查结果表明，托儿服务与孕产妇就业之间存在正相关关系，